It’s my girlfriend’s birthday on Monday and for her birthday I got her something she’s wanted for a long time – a Ragdoll Kitten. We got a purebred kitten, from a lovely breeder. Originally we thought we were getting a boy, though when it was desexed last week the Vet advised that it was in fact not a boy, no biggie though!

So, we have a beautiful young girl as part of our family now. She’s a little cheeky and mischievious, but melts your heart when she starts purring and gets the feline motor running.

Folks, say hello to Maddy:

The girl is very much in love! I’m sure she’ll provide many opportunities for future entries and if the number of photos we’ve already taken are any indication, I may well give her a photo album all of her own!

Last night I went out with a mate, first time in ages I’d been out for a few drinks. I was looking forward to it, not least because the venue we were to go to was having a birthday party for itself so had free drinks for two hours. Nice.

We headed off and met a few others there, including some people we both went to school with, it was good to see them again. Several free beers were had, followed by a few more and soon we were pretty jolly. My mate and I decided to go back to my place and have a bottle of red and watch a DVD.

We caught the train home and my darling girlfriend picked us up from the station, it was quite late. She’s been working bloody hard lately at work and my decision didn’t really take this into consideration. I was pretty full and talking quite loudly, which stopped her getting to sleep for a while, and she was pretty knackered today.

I woke up pretty seedy and feeling a bit under the weather. I also felt bad because she’d had a crap sleep and had to go into work today, while I could spend most of it on the couch feeling sorry for myself.

Overall, while I had a great night and caught up with some people, I did the wrong thing by my girlfriend. I don’t think I’ll be drinking like that again for a while.

Over the past few months I’ve become increasingly sick of myself saying I wanted to do something, yet not actually doing it. One such thing I’ve wanted to do for a while, is learn French.

I did a term of it in Year 7, way back in ‘94, and enjoyed it. I vaguely remember playing “Il Professore” in a radio play my teacher wrote himself. Our school didn’t offer French beyond that so I ended up doing Italian for three years, which was enjoyable enough, but the teacher I had was one of those wankers who mistook his own brooding for intelligence. Nuff said.

So, back to French. I want to learn the language, but have very little spare time beyond what I spend in transit (around 80 mins a day) and I usually listen to the old iPod. Using my excellent skills of multi-tasking, I decided to check out some “Learn French” podcasts. I found a few but decided to download the first 12 lessons of this one. From what I can gather so far, each lesson is between 6 and 14 minutes in length and covers the basics, before moving on to more conversational challenges. There are PDF tools you can download too which could be good.

I’m interested to see what I can pick up and am looking forward to it. The real challenge will be not talking along whilst listening to my iPod on the train…